Community members from Bhambayi north of Durban are protesting outside the Ntuzuma Magistrate’s Court where a man is expected to apply for bail for the alleged rape of his 13-year-old stepdaughter.
They are carrying placards with messages like- ‘our bodies are not here for your pleasure’ and ‘save us from rapists, end rape, no bail’.
Bhambayi Project CEO Mandy Pearson says, “The community-based NGO focuses on supporting and empowering orphans and vulnerable children in the area.
“There is no way that this man must be given bail. We have had three cases in the last few weeks of young children being raped, the youngest being five years old. This is not acceptable. We say zero tolerance for GBV. It’s women’s month but it also must be girls’ month.”
“We are seeing mothers who drop the charges because the man is the breadwinner, or because they’re threatened. We say how can we fight for the girl child? Let it not be just a woman’s month. Let’s fight for the rights and let’s make sure that rape of young children of anyone in this country [is] stopped today.”
Earlier, the Commission on Gender Equality conducted an oversight visit to almost 70 police stations across the country to assess some of the mechanisms they have put in place to deal with issues relating to gender-based violence.
But what they found highlighted the enormous challenges and pressures that police work under.
Gauteng for instance, which is the smallest and yet densely populated province, had a total of 143 police stations servicing a population of almost 16 million people.
“One police station in Gauteng services 109 000 people. KwaZulu-Natal, one station services 62 500 (people). It does look like, in terms of service delivery there are nodes where there are extreme pressure points for SAPS. We are also aware that recently SAPS announced that they are building new stations. Whether it will be sufficient to change this pressure, that is the question,” says the acting chairperson of the Commission on Gender Equality Dr. Nthabiseng Moleko.
[WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT] Man charged with the rape of stepdaughter applies for bail:
